Dreams are what you wake up from.

14 years of Livejournalling, and hopefully, more to come.

:: WHY WERE NECKTIES INVENTED? ::

October 21st, 2011

:: WHY WERE NECKTIES INVENTED? ::

It is often questioned why such a seemingly useless itemof apparel as the necktie was ever invented . It’s thought by

some anthropologists that it might have been the firstitem of clothing ever worn, taking the form of a strip offur around the necks of our ancestors . However, the ear-liest evidence of the wearing of neckties was by the Chi-nese . China’s first emperor, Shih Huang Ti, was afraid ofdeath and commanded that replicas of his army person-nel be laid to rest with him for protection . He died in 210 BC,and when his tomb was rediscovered in 1974, the intricately detailedterracotta replicas preserved therein each wore neck cloths or ties .

Neckties were also present in Roman times . In AD113, after one of his victories, the emperor Trajan erecteda marble column bearing reliefs that feature thousands ofsoldiers, many of whom are wearing neckties . It’s thought bysome that these soldiers wore neckties to guard against coldweather or to absorb sweat .

While neckties have been around in one form or anotherfor millennia, it was because of the Croatians in the seven-teenth century that wearing them became a statement offashion . After helping in a victory against the HapsburgEmpire, thousands of soldiers were presented to King LouisXIV in Paris, among them a regiment of Croatian marines,some of whom wore colorful cravats . These embellishmentsappealed to the French, who had never seen such an article

of clothing and who were soon wearing similar cravats .Until the French Revolution in 1789, the French maintainedan elite regiment known as the Cravate Royale, and the word“cravat” itself is from the French word cravate, meaning“Croatian .”

It wasn’t long before the wearing of neckties spread . In1660, Charles II returned to England from exile and re-claimed the throne that he lost during the English Civil War .He was followed by aristocrats who brought the cravat toEngland, whereupon it developed into the necktie, becamepopular and spread throughout Europe, then the U .S . andthen the rest of the world .